Spark Artist

‍Video installation, animation & sound

Working in a range of digital media, Julia Oldham visualizes the uneasy collision of nature and technology in a fragile world. She documents extant environments such as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, clear cut forests in Oregon and swaths of derelict wilderness in New York City, and she also builds fictional worlds through drawing and animation. With tenderness and humor, Oldham explores her own conflicting feelings about human progress through her narrative works, envisioning speculative futures and exploring scientific history. The final works take the form of video installations, sound works and print projects. Her practice is research intensive, frequently involving scientists as collaborators. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Queens, NY; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL; and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and has been featured on NPR. She lives and works in Eugene, OR.